


Day 3. Roasted | Haunts

by steadycoffeeflow (Salimity)



Series: Inktober 2018 [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Inktober 2018, Nightmares, Past Character Death, Past Violence, RK900 OCs, Self-Insert, safe house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 06:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salimity/pseuds/steadycoffeeflow
Summary: It was typical for Steady to have no recollection of dreams nor nightmares when she awoke each morning. A throat restrained by the grip of sleep that hadn’t relented to the waking world yet was far more terrifying than imaginations and anxieties. More real and tangible. Worth remembering. More so than the reasoning for why she’d woken up, a shout rasping from her sleep-paralyzed throat, just the hiss of escaping air with no shrill weight.Under three layers of blankets, Steady had been baked throughout the night, the weight of them unable to be easily shaken off. No memory of a dream again. Nothing conscious.But something must have held onto her, like muscles trained to memory or the faded after image of the roasting sun, scorched into retinas with trailing lines of blue.





	Day 3. Roasted | Haunts

**Author's Note:**

> Another oneshot using the characters from my lovely DBH discord roleplaying server! My obvious self-insert character I've lost control of is haunted by the memory of a hunter RK900 unit that works at her CyberLife tower. And during her off-hours, she lays low at a deviant safe-house.

 

It was typical for Steady to have no recollection of dreams nor nightmares when she awoke each morning. A throat restrained by the grip of sleep that hadn’t relented to the waking world yet was far more terrifying than imaginations and anxieties. More real and tangible. Worth remembering. More so than the reasoning for why she’d woken up, a shout rasping from her sleep-paralyzed throat, just the hiss of escaping air with no shrill weight.

Under three layers of blankets, Steady had been baked throughout the night, the weight of them unable to be easily shaken off. No memory of a dream again. Nothing conscious.

But something must have held onto her, like muscles trained to memory or the faded after image of the roasting sun, scorched into retinas with trailing lines of blue.

_ Piercing eyes, sharper than an eclipse-edge, fixing on her own. “Please register yourself.” Black hole intent, right between the eyes. _

Steady stretched with a groan, slick with sweat but welcoming the drafty chill that cut through the room, lapping over her. She wasn’t sure what time it was. Still light out. She settled on late afternoon by the dull warmth and slant of the beams through the windows. The quilts dragged along her body, clinging to it, and she almost thought to go back to bed.

There was a low moan, faint, from out in the hall. Steady went rigid immediately, trying to locate it, poised and straining to hear it again. After a couple of seconds, she licked her lips. “Hello? Rose?”

No, the voice had been too low for it to have been Rose or Aria. Reese, maybe? Or had Leba come back? Steady swung her legs over the edge of the bed, imaging just a flash that something was going to grip her ankles as soon as her heels struck the floor.

_ They’d talked about him on the TV. He’d appeared so personable in the CyberLife provided photos. Warm eyes. Welcoming intent. _

But nothing. And there were no more noises from the hall.

Steady peeked around the door, pressing it close to her body just in case someone was out there. You know. Just casually moaning. If someone were genuinely hurt, she might have been in trouble, impulse to help kicking in over her human-driven need to be chaste and presentable. But there were only meandering sunbeams from the failing afternoon drifting, laden with dust, through the hall.

The whole house was now heavy with silence.

And she could not shake this deep-pit feeling of dread that settled behind her, held its grip firm to her shoulders, pulled her back into her room and drew up the quilts to cover her shivering form. Like a fever had taken hold, Steady saw something in the corner of the room, by her dresser.

Of course, when she could convince her eyes to drag over to it, nothing was there. Just an arrangement of clothes spilling out from half-opened drawers.

Steady sat on her bed for a while longer than she’d admit to herself or anyone else. Held still by an irrational fear that if she moved, something was going to grab her. And do what, exactly?

She didn’t want to find out.

But when she noticed the creep of sun across her floor - a beam advancing steadily (ha) across the pink faded carpet - she was made aware of just how much time was passing. And her stomach burbled in response to very human needs. The only one in the house who had them at their core.

Hunger took the edge off of the fear. Made it feel silly. Exposed the irrationality of sitting still on her bed, half naked, waiting for some unknown entity to grab her for what it was. Completely and utterly inventive.

Steady stretched again, testing, then slid down off the bed a second time. The quilts lingered on her legs before gathering at the edges of the bed and onto the floor, defeated in their conquest to hold her back. She slipped on an over-sized t-shirt and slid into a pair of shorts, aware that Reese was likely to be around her at some point that day.

Then she stepped before her mirror, ready to make faces at what it held, the awkward twists and turns of her hair.

_ They changed the eyes first. She read that in a report. Testing groups all confirmed. The eyes had to go. Had to be- _

Steady screamed and dropped, knees banging hard on the rug.

_ -threatening. Imposing. Inhuman _ .

She pressed her back up against the dresser, expecting to see a looming figure there, sharp acidic angles.

But there was just the pool of quilts, sitting smugly atop the bed. Told you so girly. Should have stayed in bed. Only monsters out that way.

Steady rose to her feet, supported by the solidity of the dresser behind her, and peeked into the mirror. The face made there was just that of a scared little girl, bangs upended in the middle of the night, styled in place by sweat.

But he’d been there. She was sure of it. Just a flash. But there he was. Eyes wide as hers were now, stark in a terrorized realization. The moan from before, it suddenly sounded a lot like a plea. Something distant, from far away.

Steady crept away from the dresser, not quite straightening and not fully turning her back to her bed just yet. Cleared the door and jammed it shut once she was in the hall, afraid to let herself be too exposed.

Her thoughts were warring again. That she was alone in this house, and that she really wasn’t. Every nerve ending in her spine begged not to be exposed to a killing blow, just waiting to swing down across her back. The sharp retort of a shot she never would see coming ricocheting throughout her skull even as the rest of her splattered against the wall, like one of Aria’s hurled paint cans.

_ The next morning. No flash of recognition. Everything lost. Everything. “Please register yourself.” More indifferent than the last. Steady rose a chin to meet that blow _ .

Steady took the stairs one at a time, breathing shallow and occasionally not at all. She was helpless, paralyzed but able to move, but not away. There was no getting away the silence was everywhere his gaze able to track everything and

She’d stood there and watched him die. Sat there and joked that she was no use to them when they traced errant signals and cracked codes. Lied as tears dampened her pillow at night that she didn’t  _ care.  _ He’d  _ deserved _ it for pointing a gun in her face, pointing a gun in the face of her friends, that the world was better off with the lurching memory-less monstrosity that

No one had taken the time to explain to Steady that he was still alive somehow. That had never been resolved. She’d read research reports, out of curiosity once, then was reprimanded for not making best use of her time while on the clock. She’d just stood there, had been close enough to watch the light flicker and fade and breathing give way to stillness, so maybe he’d latched onto her, manifested in guilt

Ridiculous.

Androids couldn’t be ghosts.

Couldn’t.

Ghosts in the machine, those didn’t exist. CyberLife’s engineers made sure of that. No duplicate programs running around, nothing that would be a mirror image to that of an existing android.

Didn’t. Couldn’t.

And yet Steady was being haunted by such an impossibility.

\---

Rose found Steady on the couch, curled up in a blanket, back pressed firmly to the wall. The android hesitated only a moment to detail the scene. “Nightmare again?”

“Something like that,” Steady whispered, afraid to bring her voice to the point of a moan.


End file.
